A Guide to the John Milton Swisher Items, 1879, 1881

The items of John Milton Swisher,
soldier, farmer, and banker, include reminiscences by Swisher of his early life, his
participation in the Battle of San Jacinto and his return home to Washington County,
as well as his recollections of some noteworthy Texans of the day.

John Milton Swisher (1819-1891) was born in Tennessee to Elizabeth (Boyd) and James
Gibson Swisher. The family moved to Texas in 1833. Swisher, accompanied by a dozen
or so others, left for San Antonio to assist William B. Travis at the Alamo. They
intercepted Sam Houston’s army in Gonzales and formed into Captain William W. Hill’s
Company H of Colonel Edward Burleson’s First Regiment, Texas Volunteers. Swisher was
discharged in May after serving in the battle of San Jacinto. He worked for a time
as a clerk in his father’s store in Washington County and then served as recording
clerk of the treasury department from 1836 until his promotion to chief clerk in
1840. Swisher had a short stint as first lieutenant in the Republic of Texas Marine
Corps in 1841 before he became chief clerk of the auditor’s office at
Washington-on-the-Brazos. He also worked as a clerk for both the Ninth Congress of
the Republic of Texas and the Convention of 1845. Once more he briefly joined the
military, as colonel of the first regiment of Thomas Green’s brigade of Texas
militia and served in the Mexican War. The war ended before he could reach the
front, however.

Swisher became auditor of public accounts in 1848 and a banker in Austin in 1852. In
1860 Sam Houston appointed him paymaster of the Texas Rangers, but he was dismissed
due to unionist sympathies. He served as a purchasing agent for Confederate forces
in Matamoros during the Civil War and then ran a banking house in Galveston,
1865-1868. In 1868 he returned to Austin and served as president of a company
working towards construction of a street railway system until 1870. After donating
his reminiscences to the University of Texas at Austin, Swisher died in 1891.

The John Milton Swisher Items, 1879, 1881, are comprised of reminiscences by Swisher
of his early life, his participation in the Battle of San Jacinto and his return
home to Washington County, as well as his recollections of some noteworthy Texans of
the day. Additionally, the collection includes a broadside, entitled "Important to Texas Veterans," relating to land
certificates for veterans, September 5, 1881.

Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s History Revealed: Bringing Collections to Light project, 2009-2011.